


Everything Is

by zealousprince



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: It's All Fine, M/M, Other, Platonic Relationship, non-sexual relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealousprince/pseuds/zealousprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has John, and John has Sherlock. Everything is as it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Is

**Author's Note:**

> Enabled and betaed by the very lovely Sophie (Phiso), without whom my love of platonic Sherlock/John might not have come to light.

**Everything Is**

 

Sherlock was young and mad once. It is said that it happens to everyone. But not everyone is mad like Sherlock is mad.

 

John was young and mad once too, though "mad" is debatable, and perhaps "young" as well. Some days John feels like he was never born, never young, never grown, but was simply dropped already weary into this world like a stone, a small stone that makes barely any ripples.

 

In relation to this, Sherlock is more like a boulder rather than a stone. He makes a splash wherever he goes.

 

=====

 

Every day in 221B Baker Street is like a cataclysm, even on the quiet days. The flat exists within a perpetual mess of papers and books and rewritable discs lying unprotected on every surface. The kitchen is a hazard, Sherlock's bedroom a battlefield. Only John's room upstairs is any semblance of clean, military neat, a microcosm of calm in the storm that is their life. Their shared existence isn't a difficulty or a weirdness, not to them, who live it every day like they’ve never known anything else. Sometimes it's like they're not even two separate people, though they may sit in different rooms and not exchange words for hours or days. In those quiet moments, when there are no chases across Soho and no desperate battles of life or death, they are like two entities breathing from the same lungs, living in the same body. The Baker Street flat is their shelter, their womb, their shell in which their minds float freely, dividing sometimes and joining up others.

 

After the pool incident, in the dead, inactive times where even the criminals get tired of committing crime, they sit or lie around together, not speaking, not even looking at each other but just being _there_ , breathing in each other's stillness and secret thoughts.

 

=====

 

John thought it would bother him, that it would drive him mad that Sherlock would make a habit of lolling about on boring days, sometimes not even bothering to get dressed or to eat or to speak, as though the very foundations of life were meaningless and unnecessary. But he finds out soon enough that it doesn't faze him at all, and that he in fact welcomes the dull days where he scours the papers half-heartedly for a job, but otherwise just sits there in his chair, glancing out the window or across the room or to his right, where Sherlock sets up camp with a silk robe and a perpetual frown. It's mundane but it works, it fits in a way that sitting around at home never fit before, before or after the war. And it's wonderful, even when Sherlock gets up to shove a jar of eyeballs into the microwave, or to dissect a human body part on the kitchen table. It's like a key sliding into place.

 

=====

 

Sherlock hates silence. He hates how the pale darkness of the London sky shifts and shudders but never really changes. He hates how the people ambling about under the window are always the same. He hates how the façade of the flat opposite stays constant, new flat red brick to replace the ancient mortar Moriarty exploded just to get his attention. Most of all, he hates that he has nothing to say, even though his brain is always running a mile a minute, and that's terrible because even though he's thinking he's not _really_ thinking, it's just a mess of recollections and theories and aimless meandering observations. It's all so fantastic and meaningless it's almost whimsical, it's like wandering through the streets of London with his senses wide open all at once except he isn't going anywhere, he has no destination and so what's the point? And the answer is there is no point, not when there isn't a case to solve, not when there isn't a being to chase and elucidate and figure out like it's the person who needs solving and not the crime.

 

He loses himself a little, in those times. He lies on his sofa in the Baker Street flat and can barely keep a grip on his racing mind, it's like it's drifting up through the ceiling, trying so hard to find something that isn't there, and that is why Sherlock spends so long just lying with his hands joined and his eyes closed, because if he doesn't the thread might snap and his thoughts will go flying off without him, and he can't let that happen, he _cannot_.

 

He must not relapse into madness. He's been there before, and though it's always tempting to return he doesn't, because he knows better.

 

Besides, it's easier now. He's not alone with his thoughts anymore. Even on the cloudiest, foggiest days, there's always someone else's thoughts there, in his periphery, floating along like they belong, like they've always belonged. And he's never begrudged them once.

 

=====

 

Being with Sherlock is natural, somehow, like it's always just been, like they've known each other all their lives and nothing can separate them. John knows it's ridiculous, a little, but finds out soon that he doesn't much care. He's never felt this before, this serenity, this calm whether they're chasing an armed criminal down a dark alley or just sitting around at home, half listening to whatever crap telly is on at three in the morning. There's a joy in just being together, in the most literal sense, just being in the company of each other and breathing, listening. It's fine, it's _easy_ , it's so ordinary and yet so extraordinary that John can't help but question it sometimes, mostly during the times where he's not there with Sherlock, in the middle of the night with the sound of Sherlock's experimenting floating up the stairs to his room. John tries to write about it in his blog once or twice, but always ends of backspacing it, shaking his head. It's not something that can be put into words, described or explained or analyzed. It simply is.

 

So he stops trying to figure it out. He stops thinking about it in the terms of _why_ and _how_. It doesn't matter, as long as it's there, and as long as it never stops being there, then it's all fine.

 

=====

 

Touch is a strange thing for Sherlock. Mostly he just doesn't think about it. People tend to not touch him; they keep a respectable distance and then an inch or two more to be certain. On a very basic behavioural level, Sherlock knows that it's because he intimidates them; they are impressed and slightly frightened by him, so they give him a wide berth, as though afraid he might snap out and bite.

 

John doesn't adhere to such things, of course, but John isn't intimidated by Sherlock nor is he afraid of him by any stretch of the imagination. John can stand easily in his personal space, comfortably by his side as Sherlock relates the facts of a case or laments about the lack of them. John can shuffle around him in the narrow kitchen to fetch the tea and won't care that his jumper sleeve brushes against Sherlock's side, or that he has to place a hand on his elbow to reach around him for the teapot. Everything about John is easy, uncomplicated, unencumbered, including the casual touches. It's not something they have to talk about or even notice. Like everything else in their life it's just there, without question.

 

So it isn't surprising when, on that day when Sherlock falls into the Thames in pursuit of a three-time murderer, John drapes his heavy winter quilt over Sherlock's shoulders and then tucks himself in next to him, so that they are side by side on the sofa with John's arm pressed against Sherlock's shivering back. Sherlock is too prideful to say anything, but then again he doesn't have to; all that could be said is said in the simple gesture, the sharing of body heat to ward off hypothermia, the steady left hand on his hip. Sherlock hadn't wanted to go to the A&E even though he was shuddering and dripping and blue, but it’s better this way, that John should be the one to keep him from cold and death. This is fine.

 

That night, they fall asleep like that, curled together like boys tired out from playing. It's their best sleep in a long time.

 

=====

 

John has stopped being annoyed that people always take them for a couple, mostly because it's tiresome to get his hackles up every time it happens, and it happens a lot. It's a bit of an in-joke at the Yard, where some of the sergeants and officers find themselves comical when they follow them with their eyes and wiggle their eyebrows and refer to John behind his back as "the missus". John gives them a Look when they get too loud but otherwise doesn't bother, and Sherlock is as supremely uncaring as his customs dictate.

 

Lestrade has a funny quirk of a smile that he does when he looks at them sometimes, that kind of an indulgent older brother smile, or what John imagines an indulgent older brother smile would look like if he had an older brother. Probably Lestrade is only thinking that John is good for keeping Sherlock in line, or at least for keeping others away from Sherlock when he's in a frenzy of deduction. But John can also see a bit of the usual assumptions in his eyes, too.

 

That's all right. John is above caring about their misconceptions now. He knows Sherlock and himself better than anyone else does, and that's enough.

 

It doesn't stop him sighing at Molly, who blushes furiously whenever they approach.

 

=====

 

They share a bed, sometimes, when they're drained after a case and John can't be arsed to climb upstairs, or in the winter months when the old flat can't keep in the heat. Sherlock's room is small and cluttered and gloomy, almost permanently shut off from the outside by the heavy curtain across the window, but it's also warm and safe. It smells a bit of books and a lot of Sherlock, of his sweat and his spicy cologne. On the nights when John sleeps there, it smells a bit like him too, like wool and black tea and a tang of metal from the dog tags under his shirt.

 

Sherlock has a double mattress. He only ever occupies the left side, closest to the window, where he curls up like he does on the sofa, his arms tucked in close to his chest. John lies on his back on the right side, one hand up under the pillow, the other settled very precisely on his navel.

 

They never talk about it. John just goes, sometimes dragging in his quilt for added warmth on the most frigid nights. They never say goodnight and sweet dreams, because John's dreams are never sweet and Sherlock's nights are never good, not really. Sleep is something they do because they have to, because the human body needs sleep even though their human minds might not want it, might resist it desperately, because sleep is one of the worst places for either of them to be.

 

It's somehow more bearable when they're together, braving sleep as a team instead of facing it alone in their individual beds. Listening to each other's gentle breathing is like a mantra, feeling each other's body heat like a secret weapon against the night. _I'm here, so are you_ is their lullaby, their night-time solace. Together, they find the courage to close their eyes and drift away into the unknown, knowing that when they awaken from nightmares and terrors and endless racing dreams, the other will still be there, an anchor to this world with an unbreakable chain.

 

One night, it happens that they lie down closer than usual, and find themselves tangled together in the morning, ankles crossed, Sherlock's head against John's shoulder. And John, opening his eyes to the pale winter dawn, realizes that he hasn't had a single nightmare for a week.

 

=====

 

They kiss only once. It's Sherlock's doing. He's restless and strained, wound tight from the stress of boredom and the trauma of being kept indoors because of the mid-winter storm. John stands next to him at the kitchen counter, pouring tea and humming to himself as Sherlock dumps chemicals together in a fit of doing-something that doesn't satisfy him in the least. He wants to smash the beaker against the counter, to shatter the test tubes and sweep the burners and compounds from the counter, but John stops him with a firm hand on his arm, just a bare moment after the thoughts of destruction cross his mind. And that is extraordinary, John is so extraordinary that Sherlock forgets himself, or rather, remembers himself in an instant, and he puts the beaker down, and turns John's face towards his with his fingertips, and presses his mouth against John's, just a touch, a simple gesture akin to the curl of John's arm around his freezing body or the brush of Sherlock's knuckles in the midst of a nightmare.

 

Sherlock has kissed before, he's been young and mad, after all, but this is different from any kiss he's ever had. It's gentle and warm and completely devoid of desire, even though John's lips are moving under his in answer. Like everything else they have, it's simple, it's clean, it's them together and nothing else, nothing more complex than Sherlock-and-John. It just is.

 

Sherlock touches his forehead to John's once they part, and they stand there for a long time, the chemicals smoking faintly, the tea getting cold. John's index finger just brushes Sherlock's wrist where they're leaning against the counter.

 

Fifteen minutes later, Lestrade texts them about a suspicious suicide by drowning, and they set off for the banks of the Thames without words or delay. That's fine, that's good. They don't need anything else, nothing but each other.

 

And that's just the way it is.

 

 **The End**


End file.
